Mineral oil based lubricants are conventionally produced by a separative sequence carried out in the petroleum refinery which comprises fractionation of a paraffinic crude oil under atmospheric pressure followed by fractionation under vacuum to produce distillate fractions (neutral oils) and a residual fraction which, after deasphalting and severe solvent treatment may also be used as a lubricant basestock usually referred to as bright stock. Neutral oils, after solvent extraction to remove low viscosity index (V.I.) components are conventionally subjected to dewaxing, either by solvent or catalytic dewaxing processes, to the desired pour point, after which the dewaxed lubestock may be hydrofinished to improve stability and remove color bodies. This conventional technique relies upon the selection and use of crude stocks, usually of a paraffinic character, which produce the desired lube fractions of the desired qualities in adequate amounts. The range of permissible crude sources may, however, be extended by the lube hydrocracking process which is capable of utilizing crude stocks of marginal or poor quality, usually with a higher aromatic content than the best paraffinic crudes. The lube hydrocracking process, which is well established in the petroleum refining industry, generally comprises an initial hydrocracking step carried out under high pressure in the presence of a bifunctional catalyst which effects partial saturation and ring opening of the aromatic components which are present in the feed. The hydrocracked product is then subjected to dewaxing in order to reach the target pour point since the products from the initial hydrocracking step which are paraffinic in character include components with a relatively high pour point which need to be removed in the dewaxing step.
Current trends in the design of automotive engines are associated with higher operating temperatures as the efficiency of the engines increases and these higher operating temperatures require successively higher quality lubricants. One of the requirements is for higher viscosity indices (V.I.) in order to reduce the effects of the higher operating temperatures on the viscosity of the engine lubricants. High V.I. values have conventionally been attained by the use of V.I. improvers e.g. polyacrylates, but there is a limit to the degree of improvement which may be effected in this way; in addition, V.I. improvers tend to undergo degradation under the effects of high temperatures and high shear rates encountered in the engine, the more stressing conditions encountered in high efficiency engines result in even faster degradation of oils which employ significant amounts of V.I. improvers. Thus, there is a continuing need for automotive lubricants which are based on fluids of high viscosity index and which are stable to the high temperature, high shear rate conditions encountered in modern engines.
Synthetic lubricants produced by the polymerization of olefins in the presence of certain catalysts have been shown to possess excellent V.I. values, but they are expensive to produce by the conventional synthetic procedures and usually require expensive starting materials. There is therefore a need for the production of high V.I. lubricants from mineral oil stocks which may be produced by techniques comparable to those presently employed in petroleum refineries.
In theory, as well as in practice, lubricants should be highly paraffinic in nature since paraffins possess the desirable combination of low viscosity and high viscosity index. Normal paraffins and slightly branched paraffins e.g. n-methyl paraffins, are waxy materials which confer an unacceptably high pour point on the lube stock and are therefore removed during the dewaxing operations in the conventional refining process described above. It is, however, possible to process waxy feeds in order to retain many of the benefits of their paraffinic character while overcoming the undesirable pour point characteristic. A severe hydrotreating process for manufacturing lube oils of high viscosity index is disclosed in Developments in Lubrication PD 19(2), 221-228, S. Bull et al, and in this process, waxy feeds such as waxy distillates, deasphalted oils and slack waxes are subjected to a two-stage hydroprocessing operation in which an initial hydrotreating unit processes the feeds in blocked operation with the first stage operating under higher temperature conditions to effect selective removal of the undesirable aromatic compounds by hydrocracking and hydrogenation. The second stage operates under relatively milder conditions of reduced temperature at which hydrogenation predominates, to adjust the total aromatic content and influence the distribution of aromatic types in the final product. The viscosity and flash point of the base oil are then controlled by topping in a subsequent redistillation step after which the pour point of the final base oil is controlled by dewaxing in a solvent dewaxing (MEK-toluene) unit. The slack waxes removed from the dewaxer may be reprocessed to produce a base oil of high viscosity index.
Processes of this type, employing a waxy feed which is subjected to hydrocracking over an amorphous bifunctional catalyst such as nickel-tungsten on alumina or silica-alumina are disclosed, for example, in British Patents Nos. 1,429,494, 1,429,291 and 1,493,620 and U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,830,273, 3,776,839, 3,794,580, and 3,682,813. In the process described in GB 1,429,494, a slack wax produced by the dewaxing of a waxy feed is subjected to hydrocracking over a bifunctional hydrocracking catalyst at hydrogen pressures of 2,000 psig of higher, followed by dewaxing of the hydrocracked product to obtain the desired pour point. Dewaxing is stated to be preferably carried out by the solvent process with recycle of the separated wax to the hydrocracking step.
In processes of this kind, the hydrocracking catalyst is typically a bifunctional catalyst containing a metal hydrogenation component on an amorphous acidic support. The metal component is usually a combination of base metals, with one metal selected from the iron group (Group VIII) and one metal from Group VIB of the Periodic Table, for example, nickel in combination with molybdenum or tungsten. Modifiers such as phosphorus or boron may be present, as described in GB 1,350,257, GB 1,342,499, GB 1,440,230, FR 2,123,235, FR 2,124,138 and EP 199,394. Boron may also be used as a modifier as described in GB 1,440,230. The activity of the catalyst may be increased by the use of fluorine, either by incorporation into the catalyst during its preparation in the form of a suitable fluorine compound or by in situ fluoriding during the operation of the process, as disclosed in GB 1,390,359.
Although the process using an amorphous catalyst for the treatment of the waxy feeds has shown itself to be capable of producing high V.I. lubricants, it is not without its limitations. At best, the technique requires a significant dewaxing capability, both in order to produce the feed as well as to dewax the hydrocracked product to the desired pour point. The reason for this is that although the amorphous catalysts are effective for the saturation of the aromatics under the high pressure conditions which are typically used (about 2,000 psig) their activity and selectivity for isomerization of the paraffinic components is not as high as might be desired; the relatively straight chain paraffins are not, therefore, isomerized to the less waxy isoparaffins of relatively high viscosity index but with low pour point properties, to the extent required to fully meet product pour point specifications. The waxy paraffins which pass through the unit therefore need to be removed during the subsequent dewaxing step and recycled, thus reducing the capacity of the unit. The restricted isomerization activity of the amorphous catalysts also limits the single-pass yields to a value below about 50 percent, with the corresponding wax conversion being about 30 to 60%, even though higher yields would obviously enhance the efficiency of the process. The product VI is also limited by the isomerization activity, typically to about 145.degree. at 0.degree. F. pour point in single pass operation. The temperature requirement of the amorphous catalysts is also relatively high, at least in comparison to zeolite catalysts, typically being about 700.degree.-800.degree. F.
Another approach to the upgrading of waxy feeds to high V.I. lubricant basestocks is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,919,788 and 4,975,177. In this process, a waxy feed, typically a waxy gas oil, a slack wax, or a deoiled wax, is hydroprocessed over a highly siliceous zeolite beta catalyst. Zeolite beta is known to be highly effective for the isomerization of paraffins in the presence of aromatics, as reported in U.S. Pat. No. 4,419,220, and its capabilities are effectively exploited in the process of U.S. Pat. No. 4,919,788 and 4,975,177 in a manner which optimizes the yield and viscometric properties of the products. The zeolite beta catalyst isomerizes the high molecular weight paraffins contained in the back end of the feed to less waxy materials while minimizing cracking of these components to materials boiling outside the lube range. The waxy paraffins in the front end of the feed are removed in a subsequent dewaxing step, either solvent or catalytic, in order to achieve the target pour point. The combination of paraffin hydroisomerization with the subsequent selective dewaxing process on the front end of the feed is capable of achieving higher product V.I. values than either process on its own and, in addition, the process may be optimized either for yield efficiency or for V.I. efficiency, depending upon requirements.
While this zeolite-catalyzed process has shown itself to be highly effective for dealing with highly paraffinic feeds, the high isomerization selectivity of the zeolite beta catalysts, coupled with its lesser capability to remove low quality aromatic components, has tended to limit the application of the process to feeds which contain relatively low quantities of aromatics: the aromatics as well as other polycyclic materials are less readily attacked by the zeolite with the result that they pass through the process and remain in the product with a consequent reduction in V.I. The lube yield also tends to be constrained by the low wax isomerisation selectivity at low conversions and by wax cracking out of the lube boiling range at high conversions: maximum lube yields are typically obtained in the 20 to 30 weight percent conversion range (650.degree. F.+ conversion). It would therefore be desirable to increase isomerization selectivity and simultaneously to reduce hydrocracking selectivity in order to improve lube yield while retaining the high VI numbers in the product.
In summary, therefore, the processes using amorphous catalysts can be regarded as inferior in terms of single pass conversion and overall yield because the amorphous catalysts are relatively non-selective for paraffin isomerization in the presence of polycyclic components but have a high activity for cracking so that overall yield remains low and dewaxing demands are high. The zeolite-catalyzed process, by contrast, is capable of achieving higher yields since the zeolite has a much higher selectivity for paraffin isomerization but under the moderate hydrogen pressures used in the process, the aromatics are not effectively dealt with in lower quality feeds and operation is constrained by the differing selectivity factors of the zeolite at different conversion levels.